YAGBAJI SANI, an engineer, is the National Chairman of the new Mega Party, Action Democratic Party (ADP). In this interview with Group Politics Editor, TAIWO ADISA, he highlights the desire of the party to deepen democracy in the country adding that its leaders are not interested in the 2019 power grab. Excerpts:
WHY did you decide to form another party when you have some 60 parties already in existence?
The constitution of the country allows free association and it also gives individuals rights to contribute their quotas in any way possible, especially in a developing society like ours, with the democratic structures that we have and given the fact that the main structures we have today are weak and, in fact, I am not sure Nigerians still have confidence in those parties.
Including the APC the ruling party?
In fact, Nigerians have lost confidence as we have said in those parties that we are talking of and that, for us, is a call to duty that we should rescue the political stage from imminent collapse.
But we understand that the PDP may soon bounce back by ending its problems. If that happens, where do you hope to draw the bulk of your members?
Yes, this question is speculative because of the contending forces. If you are familiar with the reasons why PDP is going through what they are going through, it is not just the issue of litigation. It is also the issue of the party has lost the centre of attraction.
Right now?
Not just right now. You know the PDP has lost political power and the party in power, the APC will do everything possible to remain in power being their arch enemy. You know the PDP was able to hold together because they had power. They have lost political power now and I am not sure there is a centre of attraction anymore. And I am also sure that the APC, which sees the PDP as enemy number one, will allow them. When I say do everything possible, I mean that the bulk of those who formed the APC are from the PDP. The PDP does not have a centre of attraction and that is why they could not manage the litigation they are having .There’s nobody to call anybody to order and largely it is a very undisciplined party. Unfortunately for PDP, the party made elected officials as the leaders of the party and if you have elected leaders as the leaders of the party once they’re no longer elected or they are no longer holding power then the centre cannot hold because the leader is no longer there. The leader has lost his position and another leader is yet to emerge.
That is why when you are saying PDP will bounce back I don’t know how they are going to bounce back because the problems keeping PDP in crisis are inherent in PDP. It is the makeup of the PDP that is making it to have the crisis it is having and they cannot reinvent themselves, because that problem is like cancer of the brain, a brain tumour. This is why it will be hard for it to come back and then the structure is based on whether you are president or governor, then you can be able to hold the structure together. For instance, if you go to states they still have governors; to an extent they are still intact. But coming to the national level, there’s no leadership. When you rest your leadership on elected persons and nobody is elected, who is going to be the leader? Who’s the rallying point? They don’t have any rallying point. That is why the crises are compounding. You solve one today, another bigger one will emerge tomorrow. So there’s no leadership. This is why we are not bothered about PDP. PDP is gone. I am not saying people will not try to revive it, but it can’t hold? You have to be elected to be the leader of that party and if you don’t have leadership, how do you survive?
If you say there is no attraction for the PDP, what of the APC which has been receiving lots of defectors in recent weeks?
Yeah and these are not people that can go back to their constituencies and tell anybody to join them and they will listen. In fact the mere fact that you claim to be APC in some areas now has automatically set
you against the people. Mere mention of APC in some places will create anger between the proponents and the people; so the party has really lost followers. Those defecting to join them are just individuals who
are just looking for business and business is not about masses. So the masses are looking for something different, something they can associate with, not individuals running from one party to the other to go and take positions or take contracts. So these ones moving to the APC now are people looking for something and the party also knows that they are joining them to take whatever they can get. It is something not to win elections because they know that when the time for elections come these same people will get back home and the people will stone them.
You just submitted your document to INEC, are you sure you will be registered looking at the fact that many have said you are coming to challenge the party in power?
But it will be suicidal for INEC not to register us because the fact is that the present government, if INEC did not register APC will they be there today? They won’t be there, which means that Nigerians are watching to know whether this is the INEC they can trust. I am not sure we are doing anything wrong what we are trying to do is to deepen democracy it will even help the present government.
And then you said there are many parties. Well there are many parties but this is a different one. This one is a movement; we have a movement whose time has come. We are a party whose idea has come and we are not like any other party, we are different.
The situation in the South-East should scare the promoters of your party, where the bigwigs kept defecting to the APC. The North too looks settled for the APC. So where really are you targeting to draw the bulk of your party members?
There are two different things here. You have to be able to separate the two. Why do you have political parties? You have parties to win elections but the parties in existence have lost appeal…
But the APC seems to be in firm control?
Even the APC.
They are still in power you know…
Yes, they are still in power, but the power rests with the people and the people have lost faith in that party so those running there are running to grab whatever they can grab as individuals. Today, we are creating a vibrant environment so that they will also become better. Maybe our coming will help them to also become better and to also manage their party affairs more efficiently. It is really in the interest of the government of the day to ensure they have a vibrant opposition: to keep them on their toes and I am quoting even the National Chairman of the APC, Chief Oyegun. He was quoted to have said this that he would welcome mega party because it will keep them on their toes, which is better for democracy and even for this government.
But can we really say that the main agenda of your party is to get power in 2019?
I have told you that we are coming to deepen democracy. We want to come and deepen democracy and deepening democracy means that people should be able to change any government in power or for them to use their electoral power to renew their confidence or pass a vote of no confidence .That is the beauty of democracy. So if we are coming, we are coming to play, to deepen democracy so that the majesty of democracy will be given reign. So we are not coming for the sake of grabbing power.
You know that when APC came they were very resolute on taking power
No, no, you don’t take power for its own sake. You must have a reason for doing what you are doing and our agenda is all-inclusive government, the empowerment of the young people and also party supremacy. All of these are missing in the government we have right now. They are not in the government we have had. How can you say that an elected governor, who was produced by the party, is now the leader of the party? You have finished that party and the party is gone!
Do we call your party a progressive, a democratic or a conservative one?
Well, you can call us progressive, because we are progressive in the sense that like I kept saying we want to deepen democracy. Because we don’t think democracy in this country as it is now is properly situated. Even the executive is not as democratic as it should be. When you have democracy, the issue of whether progressive or conservative or whatever is immaterial. You can say that our leaning is towards being progressive to ensure that the democratic tenets are allowed to really have a say.
Why APC got it wrong is that they were just after power! power! Otherwise they would have been responsive to the need of the people, because that’s democracy. Democracy means government of the people, by the people and for the people. But where it is for the people, that is missing.
But I will still want to know where you are going to draw the bulk of your membership from. Is it from the North, North-Central, South-South or South-West?
You know the dynamics of politics today has changed. You go to everybody today; talk to an average Nigerian, I say mobilise. I told you ours is a movement whose time has come. So the idea of where do you draw your membership from is just begging the issue. I don’t know whether you have watched or you know what happened before APC came to being. Why didn’t you ask them then where they were drawing their membership from?
They had governors from the South-West; they had the nPDP faction; they had governors from the North and were banking on the street popularity of Buhari in the North. So we already knew the configuration that time.
Yes that was the configuration then, but today, you have even a better environment in the sense that some of the governors that you are talking about are in total disarray. And as for the PDP to come together, you now have to look at what will be the factor which will force them to come together.
You said that PDP have no rallying point. Who are the rallying points in your own party, because people have said that the men leading the mega party are not the real owners, that some big masquerades are behind; who are they?
The masquerades are the people. They are the masquerades. When we come out in our large numbers as we are doing now, then you will see the masquerades. The masquerades are the people. It is a movement as I told you.
What are some of the names in each of the geopolitical zones that we can go with?
I have already told you the big men are the people themselves. Democracy is about people now. Isn’t it? So it is the people themselves. Don’t forget that in today’s world, I can seat in my house and talk to one million people at the same time and it works. The politics of today is not like that of yesterday that required one man telling the people where to go; it has gone beyond that, if you recall how Obama made it, even how Trump made it.
The social media you mean…?
Exactly so. That is the politics of today. Maybe you are still thinking of yesterday, that you wanted Mr Somebody to tell everybody go and vote. No, no; the youth have taken over already if you don’t know, because they can communicate and they are enlightened. They are becoming more and more enlightened. You can give them the billions, they will take it but when they get to their handsets or this or WhatsApp and by the time they start sending text messages on WhatsApp and all this group thing, things will change. We are not thinking of any big man from the North or from the West. That’s not the issue today. Politics has gone beyond that already and as you know, even the Buhari administration benefited from that largely. It is a fact that they came with the idea of change. So when people ask me who is the masquerade; who is this, I say the masquerade is the people. I don’t need to go to the East to talk to people; there is already a network. Before you needed somebody they looked up to who would tell them that this is what to do. This is no longer the way it is done. The politics of today is when you have the idea, if you can move the people; you can move them.
and then